


Afterlife

by GeneralHuxNeedsRest



Category: True Detective
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Haunted Houses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 15:53:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18101678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeneralHuxNeedsRest/pseuds/GeneralHuxNeedsRest
Summary: When Marty wakes up one morning, he smells cigarette smoke. He sits up and sees a man standing next to an open window, smoking.Marty says his name out loud and Cohle looks at him before disappearing into the thin air.





	Afterlife

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Yesterday, upon the stair](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2544881) by [Dienda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dienda/pseuds/Dienda). 



> I wanted to write some kind of an AU and since I really loved fanfic Yesterday, upon the stair, I had decided to write something similar.   
> English is not my native language, so I apologize.

1/

The house is haunted, that much is clear to Marty since the first night he spent there.

He wished he could go home, hug Maggie and kiss the girls goodnight, but he can´t, not anymore, not after what he has done. Now he has to put up with dark shadows being where they are not supposed to be. Like sitting in the kitchen chair that’s somehow been moved to the middle of the living room, when he gets up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. When he wakes up in the morning, it’s back by the kitchen table where it belongs, and Marty really wants to blame it on a bad dream. But he knows that something’s not right there, because when he was unboxing his things in what was to be the bedroom, he left the room, only for a moment, to get the phone ringing in the kitchen and by the time he got back, there was a large wooden and metal cross on his bed and the darkness behind the half opened bathroom door was darker than it had any right to be.

 

2/

The dark mass vaguely resembling a tall, lean man likes to stand next to his bed during the night. Another thing it likes is staring at the wall and leaving cigarette smell all around the house.

 

3/

In the basement, he finds boxes full of books about philosophy, psychology and crime. What he also finds is a huge black ledger filled with sketches of people, trees and bird nets and notes that seem to be too eerie and horrifying to read. Marty leaves it all down there out of respect towards whoever owned the house before him.

He finds the ledger lying on the kitchen table the following morning. It’s open and there seems to be a new drawing of a scary looking tree. There are three cigarette butts in the ashtray, even though Marty emptied in the previous evening.

Marty stares at it all for a few seconds before closing the book and opening his mouth.

“Listen, ugh, could you please not leave your shit all over the place? And clean the damn ashtray, for fuck’s sake.”

He leaves for work and by the time he gets back, the ashtray is empty and the black ledger is tucked in the bookshelf he bought last week.

 

4/

He finds out that the man’s name was Rustin Cohle and that he was killed last year and what seemed like an armed robbery. It was Geraci’s case at the time and Marty can see his imprints everywhere; he closed the case too soon, after getting the toxicology results stating that the guy was high as hell on a mixture of LSD. There was simply not enough investigation, but Geraci was convinced that it was a gang thing; Cohle was somehow involved with the Iron Crusaders and that was enough for him.

Cohle was 31; nobody seemed to mind that he was beaten black and blue and there was a weird spiral carved into the base of his neck. No one seemed to notice that his hands were bound and a blindfold was put over his eyes, or that someone took a great care to position his body to make the whole scene look like something out of a horror movie. There was the same construction made from twigs next to his body as the one he drew over and over in his ledger.

Yeah, surely, the man was killed by the Iron Crusaders because he didn’t pay for his drugs.

Of fucking course.

 

5/

When Marty wakes up one morning, he smells cigarette smoke. He sits up and sees a man standing next to an open window, smoking.

Marty says his name out loud and Cohle looks at him before disappearing into the thin air.

 

6/

Next week, Marty does some digging and brings home a file about Cohle´s case. He opens it at the kitchen table and flips through the photos of a DB tied to a table (not the same he is sitting at, fortunately, but it appears to be in the same spot).

It says that Cohle was a bartender, working in a nearby bar four nights a week. Divorced after his daughter died. After that, his life went to hell, apparently.

It doesn’t take long for the file to suddenly go flying across the room.

The light goes out and a loud bang tells him that the basement door just shut.

“I am sorry,” he says after a moment. “I wasn’t thinking.”

He doesn’t hear from Cohle for a whole week.

 

7/

When he does see him again, it’s January the 3rd, 1995.

He wakes up early to a phone call from Geraci, informing him that a DB was found, a woman outside of Erath. He is not happy. He doesn´t like seeing women on his job.

Cohle is sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, chain-smoking.

He doesn’t acknowledge Marty´s presence and there is a haunted expression on his face, eyes rimmed red.

Marty wants to yell at him for the smoke first, but then he remembers a date from his file and instead he has to fight the urge to cross the distance between them and put his hand on the man´s shoulder.

Sophia Cohle would be five years old.

 

8/

“It’s the yellow king you are after.”

Marty jumps and almost drops his pot of coffee. The voice came from behind him and when he turns, there he is, Rustin Cohle, leaning against the wall.

“So, you have finally decided to communicate? After two months living together?” Marty says, bracing himself against the counter, regretting his choice of words the moment they leave his mouth. Surely, Rustin Cohle is not actually living much these days, even though his face is free from the cuts and bruises shown in file´s photos.

“Yellow king,” he repeats, ignoring Marty´s remark, “the woman from Erath. He will kill again. He most certainly did before, you know.”

Marty saw the devil´s nets, the trees and branches arranged around Dora Lange´s body. He carefully took a picture of every one of them.

“Did he kill you?” he asks, still remembering the reaction he got after bringing that file home.

Cohle is quiet for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure himself.

“I don’t know,” he says at last. “I am sure that more people were involved. I was too drugged to really know what was going on. Might be the Yellow King himself, but probably not. As far as I know, he is mostly interested in women and children.”

“And why did you get killed, then?”

“Since cops didn’t seem too interested in people disappearing all over the coast, I was running my own little investigation. I got too close, probably.”

Marty wants to ask him if it hurt, but then thinks better about it.

 

9/

“You could sometimes help me with the chores, as you can actually touch shit.”

“Yeah, didn’t you notice that your fucking dishes have been miraculously cleaning themselves since you moved in? No wonder your wife left you.”

Marty wants to punch him, but a glance at the calendar tells him that it’s been exactly two years since Cohle’s murder.

Instead, he buys a stack of pencils and a sketchpad and leaves them on the table before he goes to bed.

He finds it on the sofa in the morning and the first page shows a sketch of a young woman holding a child.

 

10/

The books from the basement start steadily moving into Marty’s bookshelf. He doesn’t mind; he doesn’t have any to fill it with, anyway.

And when he sees Rust curled up on a sofa with a book about Ted Bundy, the man looks as close to happy as a depressed ghost can get.

He starts to wonder what Cohle was like when he was still alive.  

 

11/

He gets up one night to take a piss and, on his way back, he finds Rust curled up on the sofa, crying.

It surprises him; he didn’t even know that ghosts could cry.

“Rust?” he calls after him and when he gets no answer, just more ugly wailing, he slowly approaches the sofa and sits down.

“Rust…” he calls again, but once again gets no reaction.

Tentatively, he moves closer to Rust and puts a hand on his shoulder, expecting to feel nothing, only air. But what he touches instead is a bony shoulder and feels the tremors wracking the other man’s body.

“Fuck, Rust…”

He doesn’t know what to do, so he hugs him. It feels like hugging a block of ice and Cohle turns to face him and much to Marty’s surprise throws his hands around Marty’s shoulders. He is so cold that Marty shivers.  

“It’s three years, Marty,” he says, his voice trembling. “Today, it’s been three years since she…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, he can’t. Marty feels his own heart breaking and hugs him even tighter.

“Shhh, Rust. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“I shouldn’t be here, Marty. I was expecting nothing, my whole life, I hoped that there would be nothing, just darkness. And maybe, just maybe she would be there, in some sort of an afterlife. But I never expected this, Marty. It’s just me, alone, forever, and this flat is my whole world. I cannot bear to think that this is how I am going to spend the eternity. I wish I was nothing, Marty. I wish I was nothing.

Marty puts his hand on the back of Rust’s head and pulls him closer. He doesn’t know what to say, so he keeps quiet.

“It’s my own personal hell, Marty.” Rust continues. “I build this.”

Marty wants to hug him and tell him that everything’s gonna be okay, but that’s bullshit; Rust is dead and nothing’s ever gonna be okay again, so he just hugs him and thinks of something to say.

“Maybe…maybe you need to come to terms with what has happened,” he says. “Accept it. You know, like moving on. Maybe that’s it.” He thinks about it a little bit more and realizes that he is actually making sense. “You know, that stuff about ghosts people believe in, that it’s people who have some unfinished business. I think that it might be the case with you.”

He realizes that Rust has stopped crying during his speech and his body seemed to be getting warmer.

“Maybe you are right,” he says in a quiet voice after a while. “I hope that you are right.”

He didn’t let go, though, and neither did Marty. They sat there for a long time, not moving, not speaking. Marty thought about Maggie. About Rust. About life and death. Then he fell asleep and when he woke up to the first rays if the sun, Rustin Cohle was still there, warm and solid in his arms, sleeping.

And breathing.

 


End file.
